ELLEGARDEN - A Channel Of Discovery [Interview]

The tour and band manager exchange glances. Watches and mobile phones are repeatedly checked. Apologies are made and i'm told that Takeshi Hosomi, frontman of Ellegarden (please note the band name is often seen in all caps, ELLEGARDEN), is on his way to the label's office and will be arriving in about five minutes. They've sati that already…About fifteen minutes ago, I don't mind too much - he's not that late and anyway, isn't this how rock stars are supposed to act? Finally, he arrives, apologizes and explains why he's late.

If you're expecting some lurid tale of groupies, psychotropic drugs and imaginatively obscene use of sea creatures, think again. Hosomi-san was watching a Discovery Channel documentary on crab-fishing and wanted to see the end of it. By the sound of things he's an avid fan of the whole series. This won't be the last time during our interview that Hosomi says something that belies his image as one go the poster boys of J-Punk.

The last time purple SKY spoke to Hosomi was after the band played the 2006 South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. I asked how things had been going since then.

"We released our latest album Eleven Firecrackers - our fifth in all and fist on america label Nettwerk at the end of july 2007. After we that we had a show in Hollywood, in the Factory a couple of weeks after it came out - that we great. That show was really booked in a short time, a couple of weeks before the actual show, so almost nobody knew about it. But the internet works, so two guys, two kids were there at six in the morning because they expected lots of people would be coming. They told me that they had been listening to our music since 1999 or something and they'd been waiting for eight long years. So that's like the seed, those two kids. The place was almost packed."

Are you  planning on going back to the states?

"I think the best think we want to do is find a really good band to play with in the states and do a whole tour. That's what we're aiming for."

What kind of bands would fall into that category?

"A rock band, it doesn't have to be a punk rock band, just a band of fun people, not too straight-edged and not too crazy, and not caring too much about money but caring about the kids. That's kind of band."

Though not exactly a young man anymore, this isn't the only time where Hosomi talk about the 'kids' as if they are far younger than him. It seems to be part of an overarching desire on  his part to 'keep it real," to not be seen as a sell out regardless of how many millions of CDs they sell and arena tours they go on. It's the age old problem in music, a recurrent theme in the forty-five minutes we spend talking, and it appears to lie at the base of everything he does. For example, I ask him why, despite the band's huge success in japan, he wants to go back to the very beginning into states, spending time driving from place to place, playing to small crowds in a foreign country that may not know about the band and might not even care.

"Being on the road is the best part of being in a band. Our shows are getting bigger and bigger - when we play a festival, sometimes we'll be on the biggest stage and have an audience of frothy or fifty thousand in front of us. It's not that fantastic to me. I'd rather be in a small venue, four or five hundred capacity, it's good to have a challenge. It sounds like a cliche but i really love to be challenged. I don't like to get used to things - doing big shows, being successful - i get bored of it. It's good to be defeated sometimes, to be a loser in front of a US audience where no one know us."

This idea of authenticity is also one that is expressed on ELLEGARDEN's most recent album, Eleven Firecrackers. In "Ash" the line "Don't fake it no more" is central part of the chorus, while "Alternative Plans" takes the idea even further. It has a sense of deep self loathing at its core, seemingly directed at the characters in the song and the fact that they do nothing of any real worth:

"Cheating on the brain,
We have no answers of our own,
Faking all the time,
No matter what our hearts desire."

The song ends with a dream of "the day we have some alternative plans." While it's hardly "I hate myself and i want to die," this sentiment contrasts with the pop-punk melodies that drive the album. The press release that accompanies it claims that it was "written from a place of darkness." When i ask Hosomi about difficulties of maintaining his 'indie cred', it becomes clear just how dark this place was.

"I think I've gotten over it now, but a couple of years ago i was in a really dark place. I had a little bit of suicidal attitude because, you know… (long pause) obtaining things is not always happy (sic), even if it's what you've always wanted. The goal of a dreamer is to keep dreaming. If a dreamer's dream comes true, it's no longer a dream, just reality. I was dreaming of being in a band, not working … and it came true, so i had a lot of fun in the first three or four years; "Now i don't need to wear a tie, now i don't need to commute by train' - that's pretty good. But after that, my band was getting bigger and bigger, so the audience started to have an image of me - a good person, nice, sweet, kind, young and strong. But no one's going to be like that. I was trying so hard to get close to that image. It was really painful. Whenever i was on the stage i'd act like how they (the audience) wanted me to act, and they were happy, and i was so happy to see that. But after getting off the stage i realized that no-one was actually around me. You know, i'd get back the the hotel room, i'd eat my dinner alone… it's hard to explain."

Hosomi went on to say how he felt like he was stuck in a vicious cycle of "writing the same kind of music, doing a tour, doing the same kind of live shows, and getting back to the studio and writing the same kind of music … it simply suck." Recently, he said, he had managed to break out of this circle and find a new way of looking at things.

"Again, it sounds like a big cliche. I think that every kid in a normal family, you know, like four or five years old, wants to be hero. Everybody loves heroes like spiderman, no one likes the bad guy. At some point kids have to grow up and forget about becoming a hero. Some do that in their teens, some do it in their twenties, but i haven't done that yet. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to give up acting like that until i die. I got really healthy after finding that attitude. I can act more and more like a man in a movie, which is cool and i'm pretty much excited."

I wondered if this meant that his writing had been coming from a happier place recently.

"I don't know if it's happier, but it's more exciting. Being depressed and saying something about suicide is just whining. Now that i've gotten over it, i'm looking forward to getting to another stage."

So what does this new stage sound like? What can the fans expect?

"There's more of an emotional punch to it. It's less pop and less like a comic book. It's more like a, uh, it's not like drawing, it's more like picturing things. I think i'm a person who really can't wait to see what kind of music i'm going to create at the next step."

Is this change in the music you're writing a reflection of a change in the music you've been listening to?

"My listening tendency has been changing recently because i'm trying to find something new. When i was much younger i was listening to the fast songs, fast, poppy songs, and thinking 'i want to do that.' But now i'm listening to a new style of music and i'm trying to move one step ahead of where that music is now. (Laughs) Am i being big mouthed? I'm not saying i can do it but that's  my goal."

Hosomi continues in this vein, saying that he wants to "forget" the skills he has already develop, changing the very structure of the songs he writes. Doesn't he worry that this way cost the band some of its fans?

"Artists are not creating their music to sell out. Artists are just creating what they want to create."

This is consistent with something he talked about earlier, while discussing the new material he'd been writing - "Maybe it'll result in losing a number of our fans, but i don't care. If the depth of our understanding through music gets deeper, i don't care about the numbers." He added, "Of course the best thing is deeper and bigger, but shallower and bigger is the worst thing. So the second best is deeper and smaller."

A couple of weeks later, when i got to see band play the final date of their Japan tour at the Zepp Tokyo, it's hard to imagine what Hosomi would have to do to disappoint Ellegarden's fans. Despite awful weather (intermittent heavy showers and an unseasonable chill in the air), the plaza outside the station was full of Ellegarden fans trying desperately to find someone willing to sell them a ticket. Inside, the venue is packed and i take my seat up on the balcony with the other oldies and assorted members of Tokyo's indie/rock glitterati. Member of Asian Kung-Fu Generation mingle with friends and there are other faces that are familiar, but i can't place them.

Opening act B-Dash are unrelentingly awful - a mix of big sun glasses, bad hair and mangled rock cliche. Their by-the-numbers punk sound seems to go on forever, even though hey only play about six or seven songs (to be honest i stopped paying attention after the first one). The crowd seems to enjoy them initially as few audience members use the time to get some pre-ELLEGARDEN crowd-surfing in. However, B-Dash's appeal seems to wane after a while and there's palpable sense of relief when singer Gorgom announces that the next one is the last one. They scuttle off stage and the audence's anticipation of the main event fills the hall.

Ellegarden come on stage as a giant back-drop with a skull rises behind them. Thankfully, that's about as Spinal Tap as the night's proceedings get. They open with "Space Sonic", "Mosnter" and "Gunpowder Valentine," barely pausing between each number. The crowd is all over the place as the security guards try to deal with wave after wave of surfing and the temperature inside the Zepp seems to double.

Ellegarden are tight, play flawlessly, and Hosomi holds an almost Messianic sway over the audence, it's hard to believe that this is the same polite, documentary-watching guy that i spoke to only a couple of weeks beforehand.

Maybe one of the reasons Ellegarden are loved so much is the sheer value you get from one of their shows, playing almost twenty songs by the time they finished with "Make a Wish". And then they returned for an encore, playing "Koukasen" and "Starfish." Hosomi inform the audience that people have gotten used to the band doing two encores, but tonight they will only be doing the one. Thw crowd doesn't seem too happywith this turn of events, but all bad feeling seem to melt away when they launch into a manic version of "Kinsei."

According to my dictionary, 'Kinsei' can be translated as either a 'dazzling victory' or 'the win of a rank and file sumo westler over the grand champion,' it was a perfect description of the nights events.
A couple of weeks before, i'd asked Hosomi about the band's future. Next year will be their tenth anniversary, so i wondered if there would perhaps be a "Best Of" in the pipeline or some kind of career retrospective.
"No, for me it's like, commercial. What i created five years ago is what i created five years ago; it's not a new thing. Actually, i really don't care about the ten year anniversary or something, because it's just a number, it's not different from nine years or eleven years, so i think we're not celebrating it at all."

Fair enough. So what does the future hold for Ellegarden?
"I feel like i just started a band and the next album is going to be our second first album, so i'm pretty much excited. Hopefully the next album will be out before next summer/late spring and then i really want to be on a really long tour which lasts for more than six months. Of course, i'd love to go and visit the US, Korea and Japan and maybe some other countries. Then after that, if i'm tired, i'm going to take a long break, but who knows. A couple of weeks ago i made up my mind, like OK, keep running at this place for at least one more year, maybe faster. Do my best, nothing other than music and concentrate on the music for a year at least, it's going to be quite fun." pS

by: Graeme Jarvie

from unknown magazine's article (if you know, just tell me. thanks:)
rewrite: ik's